Every Picture Tells a Story
by I LOVE BLUE COVE
Summary: Episode-related fic.


**Jarod**

You ask the usual questions, the questions expected of you, but it is what you don't ask that sticks with you longest, that is the most telling and the most haunting all at once.

You have been trained to believe that actions don't lie, that with enough investigation, even the most obscure reasons must become apparent, but you don't quite know why you do what you do. Is it to avenge yourself, of those you had inadvertently hurt through your actions, unknowingly, unthinkingly, in the past (you were not trained to feel horror, to imagine recoiling), or is it for them, in some awkward way, is it for them, because they cannot do that for themselves, because they still stumble about, fumbling in the dark, labouring under their false pretences the way it sometimes happens in this imperfect world that is at once imperfect and all wrong and beautiful, full of such beauty? Do you do it because actions speak louder than words and though you were taught, were forced into being what you are today, nobody taught them how to be what they should have known all along, how to be moral human beings? It is your obscure way of punishing them, of avenging yourself, for all that you are not, have not been, will not be, because all they have done to you and have not allowed you to do?

You are not quite sure, just as you are not quite sure the sentiment you must now choose to feel in regards to the name, your name, if you are to believe Sydney. It has been your name, is your name, but do you want it to be, and should that be enough, that it was chosen for you, and so you should merely accept this fate, though it may not have been handed to you lovingly, in love, or should you rethink, re-become, choose differently, choose something else? You do not know, even now, though other people, other individuals do so all the time; strike out in different ways, assert themselves to the world, their world, the universe. But you are not in disagreement with the universe. At least, you don't think you are. You understand that flaws exist, that wrongs happen, it is the way of the world, but these wrongs are not all your personal doing, and then there are some that are.

You wish to become something else, in time. A better person, perhaps, or merely _more_ of a person, though you understand, rationally, that you could not be more or less just the way you are now, you already are. The only problem is in feeling it, and so you resort to what you know, to actions, because actions speak louder than words, and nothing you could say to them, to these people who have hurt you, who have taken so thoughtlessly from you, but with full intent, could do a thing to change what has happened, or what will go on happening. It is only actions that change the world, and actions are born of impetus, reason. So now you have decided to give them a reason, just as they gave you so many, many reasons in your lifetime.

They did not give you the luxury of choice, of forethought or afterthought or feeling. It does not matter what you feel, that you feel at once more and less human than you have ever felt, it is your actions that will speak for you, and your actions want them to know how it feels to live without freedom, without self, because your name is just a name, after all. Just a word.

Meaningless, without feeling behind it. History.

And your history is not even a whisper in the wind tonight, not even a breeze on the ocean. Your history can be measured in the reproving looks you drew from your mentor, Sydney, and the quiet way in which he asked you to care, and implied that you did not care enough (admonished you for not caring), all the while he gave you no _room_ to care because all the sentiment in the world would equal nothing without follow-through, without actions. You are not angry because of this, exactly, because of the ill way you were taken, because he saw you in a way that makes you hurt, now, but you want him to know he was wrong for it, you were and are a human being and not a plaything, a machine or a toy or a device, a human being, and though he never really gave you scope for that, room for that, it is something you couldn't forget, even when you forgot your mother's smile, even when you forgot love and sunshine and all of the other things that now make you at once overwhelmed so that you feel you could burst from it all, and so very, very cold to know that they kept it from you, wilfully, to know that someone, anyone, could treat another human being in such a manner for so long a time and not think, _Perhaps this is not right._

You know that Sydney knew – it is only rational, you imagine – you do not know why, but the why doesn't matter any longer. What was has passed and what will be will reveal itself in time, and there is no way to un-write what has happened, only ways of surviving. So you try to survive as best you know how, and you don't think too hard on how you might not be the most lovable person, or reasonable, because your actions, though sometimes skewed, are intended for good, and that is all a person can strive for, in this day and age, the way you were "brought up".

Perhaps, one day, in trying to save another, you will find you have inadvertently saved yourself, also. You hope so, as much as you understand the notion of hope. You hope it will one day feel right to be what you are, a human being. Logic tells you you are human, and you should have no reason to feel strange or awkward about what you have always been, and always will be, but you do not see it that way. Before, they had tried to make you something else, had tried to make you beholden to them in every way possible, and they succeeded. In all the ways that count, they succeeded. Now you are making you you. You can only hope that this person you are becoming, this person you will someday discover, will be a good person. If you could have anything, you would like to be a good person.

Good people are loved, deservingly, and if you were a good person, perhaps you would deserve love too. You have certainly felt pain, but along with the pain are the parts that are not pain. You know how to wait, they have taught you patience, you have taught yourself through necessity, so you tell yourself you will wait, you will not lose patience, you will... have hope.

And when those good things come to you, you dare to dream, to imagine, that they will be so bright and so good as to take the pain away, as to make it so insignificant it seems like nothing at all, just something that happened to you one day and is now apart of your past.

A past that is firmly passed.

* * *

**Miss Parker**

She is a woman of the new age, and a child of the old.

She sleeps in a bed of soft, pressed-flat flowers, their colours do not burst or snap eagerly, crying their victory, their taste for adventure, to the new day. Her flowers are sad, old. Wilted in pastel cream. But warm.

She assumes a semi-crouched position, as she unfurls from the field of flowers and perches on the edge of her mattress, the harsh jarring lilt of the telephone ringing in her ears still. An unnatural sound, a sound not to be found in nature, in the immense, sprawling (imaginary) flower fields of her childhood. Running, laughing – so happy, so very gay – sunshine on her cheeks, learning to _float_.

He speaks to her over the telephone, through the telephone, this strange contraption that she holds to her ear the way children hold sea shells to their ears – shiny, _real_, precious – and listen to the whisperings of another world, another universe. She is cynical, full to bursting with amused superiority. She is not sure why she is better, more, than Jarod, she merely is – she is Mr. Parker's daughter, _the_ Daughter – and he doesn't even remember his parents, has no clue what they did, what they _do_. He is an instrument, and she a player (a true artist), but he has strayed, forgotten himself, imagined himself a new in this new world he has found. Now, he thinks himself an artist too.

She doesn't correct him, because deep down, he still knows, still remembers, the truth. He is a tool, an instrument, most at home in the hands of his player. Without that warming touch, he is cold and alone. When he finally admits this, she thinks he will come home. If she'd been someone else, she'd have had her reservations, but would have hoped nonetheless, but she is not someone else. She is who she is, she is the Daughter. Though it is a song she knows well, she is constantly finding new, exciting ways to reinvent the same old tune, to reinterpret it afresh, bringing forth wonder, joy, truth and lies. _She_ is an artist.

She can smile, her eyes glittering in the darkened night, glimmering, because she is always right, that is her role, her place, she was merely chosen to be the rightest. She may be the laughing monster, right now, but sometimes the monster is the hero, and that is her. And the poor, deluded darling on the other end of the telephone, he is calling out to her, the tragic figure, begging her to rescue him, to bring him home, though he knows it not.

She will be the monster and slay it to, because she is one of many things, and many of one. She is the heroine and as the DSA comes alive beneath her fingertips, the glow of it dancing, flirting with the darkness charmingly, she watches a scene from both of their pasts. It is only then that she thinks – feels – something different, something she does not think has been written for her, the heroine. It is the truth, it is the past, at once unwelcoming and dangerously seductive. It draws her inexplicably into its web and wails, screams, her name, her name: This is you, you are this. You have been living for so long, believing a lie, breathing a lie. Now open your eyes, child, as if for the first time, and see. Sweetness, see. Feel.

Her first feeling is incredulity, impossibility, but oh!, oh, this _was_ her, is the daughter, and this feeling twisting deep in her gut, in her deepest, darkest recesses – could that be her soul? – it eats her, consumes her. She has swallowed a breath of strange air, the strange brew, and now it is eating her from the inside out, it lives in her, gives her life, and gives "life" strange new meaning.

Her mind whirs.

Who is she and who had she been?


End file.
